Cross-disciplinary teams transforming our understanding of the brain
Big Ideas are the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute's flagship research projects. These five-year grants catalyze cross-disciplinary teams of researchers to collaboratively tackle fundamental questions that advance our understanding of the mind, brain and behavior in health and disease.
Our Big Ideas projects include bold projects to advance our understanding of the science of addiction and brain rejuvenation, to design new technologies to interface with the brain, and to build research platforms to connect molecular to systems-level neuroscience and advance the study of human brain organoids and assembloids in the lab.
Applying for Big Ideas Grants
Big Ideas grant applications are currently closed. Stay tuned for announcements about our next call for letters of intent.
Funded Big Ideas projects
NeuroChoice Initiative (Phase 2)
The NeuroFab: The hub for new ideas in neuro-engineering
Creating an incubator for next-generation neural interface platforms.
Neurodevelopment Initiative
Investigating how the brain develops from infancy to adulthood across species, focusing on how the interplay between structural development, functional development, experience and affect brain computations and ultimately behavior.
NeuroVision Initiative
The goal is to forge an inter-disciplinary collaboration between physicists, biologists, chemists, and translational medical scientists by inventing new ways of visualizing the brain, from individual molecules to neuronal circuits to entire brain regions, from a normally functioning neuron to a diseased brain.
NeuroPlant Initiative
The NeuroPlant Initiative aims to leverage a botanical armamentarium to manipulate the brain — by building a pipeline to explore chemicals synthesized in plants as potential new treatments for neurological disease and as a window into the chemistry of the brain.
Neuro-Omics Initiative (Phase 2)
Creating new tools to help neuroscientists bridge the study of genes and proteins operating in the brain to the study of brain circuits and systems, which could lead to a deeper understanding of brain function and disease.
Neuro-circuit interventional research consortium for understanding the brain and improving treatment
Combining a detailed understanding of brain circuits with technology that modulates neural activity to develop improved ways of treating mental health conditions.
NeuroChoice: Optimizing Choice - from neuroscience to public policy
Big Ideas Award Announcements
Big Ideas Round 2, Phase 2 (2021)
Toolmakers aim to untangle fundamental challenges in neuroscience
Big Ideas Round 2 Phase 1 (2018)
Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute announces the second round of Big Ideas